Information policy of the Russian Federation
The modern state information policy of the Russian Federation attaches absolute priority to ensuring national sovereignty and national security in the information sphere in the broadest sense of these concepts.
The most important reference points are the guarantee by the Constitution of the Russian Federation of the right of citizens and legal entities to freely receive and distribute information for mass use; the development of information legislation; ensuring information security; regulation of the activities of national mass media provided for by Russian legislation; countering information ideological diversions; implementation of programs of the state policy of informatization, development of information infrastructure and the system of information resources, telecommunications and communications; participation in international information exchange; information support of the activities of the Russian state in the field of foreign, defense, economic, social and cultural policy; implementation of programs for the formation of an objective image abroad of modern Russia; assistance in ensuring the competitive position of the domestic information and informatization complex in the global market of specialized technologies, goods and services.
The first comprehensive understanding of the goals, objectives and objects of the state information policy, the main directions and mechanisms of its implementation, the results of the impact of the ISU on the socio-economic, political and cultural development of the Russian Federation at the end of the XX and the beginning of the next century was undertaken in modern Russia in connection with the adoption at a meeting of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy and Communications on October 15 1998 and at the meeting of the Permanent Chamber on State Information Policy of the Political Advisory Council under the President of the Russian Federation on December 21, 1998, the Concept of the State Information Policy of Russia.
For the first time after statehood, the concept concretized the activities of public authorities and management for the formation of an information society in Russia, the formation of a unified information space of the country and its entry into the world information community. The official definition of the concept of the state information policy of the Russian Federation was formulated as a set of goals reflecting Russia's national interests in the information sphere, strategic directions for achieving them (tasks) and a system of measures implementing them.
Since the early 1990s, the principles and provisions of the state informatization policy expressed in various informatization programs have been formed and developed in Russia. Their main content was to provide scientific and technical, production and technological, organizational and economic conditions for the creation and application of information technologies, information infrastructure and information resource formation systems. At the same time, the policy of informatization was practically separated from the policy pursued by the state in the field of mass media, communications and telecommunications. For many years, the State information policy has mainly covered issues related to the activities of the mass media. In the Concept, the content of the ISU was expanded somewhat and it already includes certain elements of protection of the constitutionally guaranteed rights of citizens and organizations to publicly available information, as well as some aspects of information security.
Within the framework of the ISU, the Concept laid the foundation for solving such major tasks as the formation of a unified information space of Russia and its entry into the world information space, ensuring information security of the individual, society and the state, the formation of a democratically oriented mass consciousness, the formation of the information services industry, the expansion of the legal field of regulation of public relations, including those related to obtaining, dissemination and use of information, contributed to strengthening the relationship between the federal center and the regions, strengthening federalism and the integrity of the country.
The 1998 concept defined the free creation, dissemination and consumption of information as the most important constitutional right of citizens, elevating state information policy to the rank of a serious driving force for democratic transformations of society and the state in Russia, reflecting and taking into account the many interests of citizens, public organizations and movements, federal, regional and municipal authorities, state organizations and commercial structures.
Of course, since the adoption of the Concept in 1998, a lot has changed over the past decades both in Russia and in the world around us.
Today, we all live in the conditions of the new political reality surrounding us. Over the past decades, titanic work has been done to create a powerful material and technological base of the ISU in the country. However, many key provisions of the 1998 Concept have not lost their relevance today, and this document itself has become in fact the first important programmatic basis for the subsequent development and adoption of a number of further strategic programs for the development of the information society in our country and the improvement of state information policy.
The development of strategic directions of the ISU, along with foreign, defense, socio-economic and security policies, is carried out directly by the President of Russia.
The main functional task of the state information policy of Russia at present is the realization of the national interests of the Russian Federation in the information sphere, ensuring its information sovereignty and information security.
The object of information policy is the information sphere of society's life - printed and electronic mass media, communication media; information law and information security. The subject is the state institutions of power, bodies and structures exercising authority and ensuring the fulfillment of tasks facing the state. The priority task of the state information policy is to ensure universal universal access to information and information services, which is an essential condition for successful socio-economic development, strengthening the unity and security of the country, and consolidating Russian society.
The purpose of the ISU is also to prepare and implement federal targeted programs by analogy with the Electronic Russia program in force since 2001, which specify the participation of public authorities and management within their competence in the formation and implementation of public policy.
The long-term strategic goal of the state information policy of Russia is the task of forming an open information society based on the development of a unified information space as the space of an integral federal state, its integration into the global information space, taking into account national characteristics and interests while ensuring information security at the domestic and international levels. In the medium term, it is planned to create a unified information and telecommunications space of the country as a base for solving the tasks of socio-economic, political and cultural development of Russia and ensuring its national security.
Two aspects of the state information policy differ: technological (regulation of the process of development of components of the information environment) and substantive (priorities of communication activities of participants in the socio-political process). The state exerts a regulatory influence on both the central components of the GIP - both socio-political and technical-technological.
Currently, the functions of the state information policy of Russia consist primarily in promoting the development of civil society in the country, ensuring a constructive dialogue between the government and society, between public authorities and management at all levels and the media; recognizing the presumption of openness of information to citizens and protecting their information rights; the orientation of the main components of the information space to ensure the free circulation of information, the implementation in practice of the constitutional right to freely search, receive, produce information and distribute it, ensuring citizens' access to open state information resources; preserving and strengthening the spiritual and moral values of Russian society, the intellectual, cultural and scientific potential of the country; effective operational protection and active offensive counteraction based on the principle of proactive action against internal and external information threats, ideological sabotage and information provocations. It should also be noted that the openness and accessibility of the entire system of Russian public authorities and management is also an important form of countering corruption in the country.
A set of issues related to the state policy of informatization should be mentioned separately. In the context of the ISU of Russia, work is being carried out in the following areas: creation of an effective modern high-tech national complex of information resources and information and telecommunications infrastructure; comprehensive development of domestic scientific, technical and industrial potential necessary to complete the processes of formation of a unified all-Russian information and telecommunications space; stimulating the market of advanced information and telecommunication facilities, modern, competitive with foreign analogues of information products and services.
In a number of areas of creation of the latest information and telecommunication technologies, the Russian market of informatics and information products is already to a certain extent integrated into the global one. An effective technological base of digital technologies has been created in the interests of the domestic defense industry. The priority of the development of the digital economy in the country is formulated. This process has acquired particular importance in recent years from the point of view of the country's national security due to the sanctions policy pursued by Western countries against Russia, which is clearly designed for a very long period. In the current external conditions, the accelerated completion of the creation of a full-scale domestic database of high-quality modern information and telecommunications products and guaranteed protection of information resources from unauthorized access, reliable security of information and telecommunications systems operating and being created in the country is particularly relevant. Inextricably linked with this is the need to increase comprehensive state support for the processes of specialized training and retraining of domestic highly professional personnel.
In order to form a unified systematic approach of the state to the development of the information technology industry, on November 1, 2013, the Government of the Russian Federation approved the Strategy for the Development of the information Technology industry in the Russian Federation for 2014-2020 and for the future until 2025. It was assumed that the implementation of the Strategy would help reduce the dependence of the country's economy on commodity exports by increasing exports of information technology products to 11 billion US dollars; to increase labor productivity due to the accelerated introduction of information technologies into the most important sectors of the economy; to improve the overall investment climate in Russia in the interests of accelerating the transition to a new post-industrial technological structure of society. Along with this, the Strategy provided for ensuring information security and a high level of the country's defense capability, including through the creation of modern means of responding and preventing global information threats.
The implementation of the Strategy's measures was supposed to support the average growth rate of the information technology industry at a level significantly higher than the average growth rate of gross domestic product, increase the number of high-tech jobs in the Russian information technology industry, and ensure an increase in the volume of production of domestic products and services in the field of information technology.
Taking into account the changing external environment caused by the Western sanctions policy towards Russia, the well-known initiative of a number of Russian experts on the need to create legal, economic and organizational conditions for combining state and non-state information resources, information and communication networks and systems into a single national information and communication infrastructure and a system of national information resources has become particularly relevant.
A lot has already been done.
Informatization of all spheres of public administration has recently become one of the priorities of the information policy of the Russian state. Since 2002, the Electronic Russia program has been implemented, which has significantly expanded the use of modern IT technologies in public administration practice. Since 2007, the use of information technology has served as an obligatory criterion for the effectiveness of the work of departments, regional authorities and local governments in the context of adopted regulations to improve the efficiency of public administration and improve the provision of public services to citizens of the country.
So, for example, in July 2017, the State Duma adopted in the last, third reading a bill on telemedicine, allowing electronic prescriptions to be written and medical care to be provided remotely. A unified federal specialized system will be used to identify the participants of the program. Doctors will be able to issue prescriptions for medicines and certificates in the form of an electronic document. In addition, it provides for consultations of the patient with the attending physician remotely after an in-person appointment or examination. The bill is due to enter into force in 2018. Telemedicine care will fully comply with the medical standards in force in the country, and the information received during such consultations is subject to medical secrecy.
Another confirmation of tangible progress towards the digitalization of public services in the interests of the country's population is the activity of multifunctional centers, which marked, without unnecessary epithets, a genuine revolution in the direction of a real transition of the Russian citizen from the era of bureaucracy to the era of digital technologies.
From hours-long queues in endless corridors of various authorities and management to electronic document management carried out within a few minutes.
The priority principles of planning and implementing the state information policy of Russia for almost three decades ahead until the adoption in May 2017 of the Strategy for the Development of the Information Society in the Russian Federation for 2017-2030 were laid down precisely in the first Concept of the ISU in 1998. Among them: openness and two-way communication interaction between government and society, central information policy measures are openly discussed by society and the state takes into account public opinion in the order of feedback. Information security, achieved through the implementation of a unified state policy in the field of information security, a system of organizational, legal, economic and other measures adequate to threats to the information interests of the individual, the state and society. Consistency due to a program-oriented approach to the problem of informatization of Russian society, when, when implementing decisions taken to change the state of one of the regulated objects, its consequences for the state of others and all together should be taken into account.
These principles also include social orientation and equality of interests by taking into account equally the interests of all participants in information activities, regardless of their position in society, form of ownership and state affiliation, while focusing the main programs of the ISU on ensuring the social interests and spiritual needs of Russian citizens. State support and state financing of key ISU programs, primarily aimed at the information development of the social sphere, reducing regional disparities in the communication sphere based on the information integration of regions and overcoming the information and technological imbalance between different groups and strata of society.
Subsequently, even before the fundamental changes that have taken place in the field of international relations since 2014, related to the introduction by Western countries of a system of sectoral sanctions against Russia, the conceptual documents adopted after the 1998 Concept of the development of the ISU of Russia began to emphasize more and more clearly the priority of the requirement to respect the interests of a domestic manufacturer of information products and technologies.
The available information resources of Russia (databases, electronic information arrays, library and archival collections, etc.) are enormous in their volume, cost and complexity. At the same time, there are still many reserves to increase the degree of their use to fully meet the needs of society and reach the level of the leading industrialized countries of the world according to these indicators.
Among them: creation of a state system for auditing and monitoring the state of information resources; formation and implementation of federal, regional and intersectoral programs aimed at the formation and use of scientific and technical information, informatization of libraries, archives, etc.; budget financing of socially significant information systems; creation of economic conditions to support domestic producers in the development of the sector providing various information public services; stimulating the creation and development of national corporate networks and commercial systems; protecting citizens' rights to privacy and access to information; implementing concepts, programs and projects for the development of information and telecommunications systems and networks consistent with international standards; supporting promising scientific research in the field of creating a competitive domestic element base.
Currently, the State Program of the Russian Federation "Information Society (2011-2020)”, approved by the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation dated October 20, 2010, as well as the Strategy for the Development of the information Technology industry in the Russian Federation for 2014-2020 and for the future until 2025, also approved by the Government Decree of November 1, 2013, are in force. Both documents provide an expanded modern definition of the concept of the information environment as a set of information, objects of informatization, information and communication systems and networks, including the Internet.
As of December 2016, according to the Ministry of Communications and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation, there was a shortage of 1 million specialists in the information and communication sphere in the national economy of Russia. Appropriate jobs have already been created for most of them. In 2017, the number of employees in this profile was 400 thousand. The Ministry of Communications and the Ministry of Education and Science are working to increase the number of budget places for students studying IT disciplines in Russian universities.
The practice of creating basic departments of enterprises of the appropriate profile in universities has been launched to facilitate, inter alia, solving the issue of specialized employment of graduates of higher educational institutions. If in 2012 there were only 27 thousand budget places for training in information and communication technologies in the country, by the beginning of 2017 this figure had almost doubled to 42 thousand.
The consistent implementation of the state information policy has opened up new opportunities for public authorities and management to regularly inform the population about political and socio-economic life through the media, press centers, public relations centers, etc. The large-scale work carried out on the creation and continuous improvement of legislation, legal and organizational mechanisms has made it possible to effectively regulate the relationship of all subjects of political life of modern Russian society in the implementation of their information rights and obligations. In principle, the country has established an integrated functioning system of independent and transparent control over the activities of State media, institutions, centers and public opinion research services, as well as special public relations services.
The development and implementation of civilized, democratic forms and methods of influencing the media within the framework of the legal framework in force in the country, which is one of the main tasks
The ISU has created appropriate conditions for the formation and dissemination of spiritual values that meet the national interests and cultural and historical traditions of Russia.
The state information policy of Russia performs regulatory functions in relation to domestic mass media, which are both the object and the subject of the ISU, and the most important tool for its practical implementation.
The priority goal of the implementation of the state information policy in relation to the media is to develop legal, economic and organizational measures that ensure the necessary balance of interests of the individual, society and the state in the activities of the media through direct support of state media and determining the attitude of authorities to non-state media while ensuring equality and diversity of organizational forms of their activities and any form of ownership.
Another goal is to establish a balance between state and public regulation of media activities and to create legal, organizational, economic and technological conditions for the effective performance by the media of the function of objectively informing the population, social institutions and the state. In this context, it is also worth mentioning such tasks of the ISU as monitoring full compliance with legislation on the media, countering the subordination of the media to opportunistic interests that do not meet the objective needs of society, regulating the degree of monopolization and concentration of the media, guaranteeing their pluralism and access to public authorities and management at all levels, taking into account the interests of regional and local information authorities.
The ISU also performs a restrictive and protective function from the point of view of ensuring the information security of the country both in socio-political and technological terms, including preventing the dissemination of information on the territory of the country that contradicts the requirements of the Constitution of the Russian Federation, Russian legislation, generally accepted norms of ethics and morality. The essence of such a protective and restrictive function has nothing to do with state political censorship, which, in accordance with the current Basic Law of the Russian Federation, is unacceptable in Russia. This function of the ISU fully complies with the requirements of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, adopted by Resolution 2200 A (XXI) of the UN General Assembly on December 16, 1966.
Article 19 of the Covenant states that everyone has the right to freedom of expression; this right includes freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, orally, in writing or through print, or artistic forms of expression, or by other means of his choice.
The use of these rights imposes special duties and responsibilities. It may therefore be subject to certain restrictions, which, however, must be established by law and are necessary to respect the rights and reputation of others; to protect State security, public order, public health or morals.
Russia, being the most important participant in international information exchange, has a developed information and communication infrastructure in the Eurasian space, and, in its constant capacity as one of the key links in the global information space, traditionally performs the functions of a connecting communication bridge between Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. He consistently opposes any kind of "hybrid wars" and their invariable component - "information wars", against the transformation of international relations into an arena of fierce information warfare, against any kind of ideological information sabotage and provocations.
The implementation of the Russian ISU implies the active participation of the Russian side in international information cooperation, taking into account the national interests of the country. Such activity is focused on the development and adoption of legal provisions and international agreements that ensure information security in the processes of cross-border information exchange and the creation of interstate legislation and international standards in the field of information security. In particular, the Russian side proposes the development of an agreement with the participation of as many States parties to such an agreement as possible on coordinating activities in the field of combating information terrorism and information crime, preventing cyber threats and coordinating actions to minimize their consequences. The subject of negotiations should also be the international legal protection of national information resources and intellectual property, as well as copyrights to materials distributed over global open networks, primarily on the Internet.
Russia stands for the adoption of agreed national and international legal norms establishing responsibility for hacking and other computer crimes, malicious penetration into national state and corporate information networks, violation of the rights and legitimate interests of citizens in the process of information exchange. It is also proposed to consider the possibilities of controlling the dissemination of obscene and insulting information on the Internet, unfair advertising, fraudulent transactions, etc., which have a negative impact on the mass consciousness, physical, mental and social health of people.
For a number of years, our country has been advocating, in particular, the adoption by the United Nations of rules of conduct for States in cyberspace. Russia has developed a draft convention on cooperation in Countering Information crime under the auspices of the United Nations, which should replace the Budapest Convention on Computer Crimes of 2001, which, according to the Russian side, contains certain threats to the national sovereignty of our state. The main focus is not on post-fact response to cyber attacks, but on the priority of broad international cooperation to prevent computer attacks.
Russia supports the introduction of manufacturers' responsibility for ensuring the security of software and hardware. On the territory of the Russian Federation, the production, distribution and use of malicious software is a criminal offense.
All other UN member states could follow this example.
During the talks between Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Dmitry Medvedev. During the G20 leaders' meeting in Hamburg (Germany) in July 2017, cybersecurity became the third most important topic discussed by the leaders of both countries after the issues related to the situation in Syria and Ukraine. It was noted that the field of cybersecurity is becoming increasingly risky and threats, including terrorist ones, are being born in it. On the Russian side, a proposal was put forward to develop a comprehensive approach to solving issues of combating terrorism, organized crime, as well as hacking in all its forms, making them the subject of Russian-American cooperation within the framework of a specially created joint working group. Moreover, there is still some experience of Russian-American cooperation in the IT sphere - the relevant bilateral mechanisms were created in 2013 as part of a package of agreements between the Russian Federation and the United States on confidence-building measures in the field of information and communication technologies.
